Earth for Sale: The Fight to Stop the Last Plunder of the Planet

“The financialization of nature is a dangerous development that surprisingly few know about,” warns Canadian environmental activist Barlow (Still Hopeful) in this astute treatise. Corporations have responded to the climate crisis, she explains, by offering carbon trading, wildlife conservation bonds, plastic offsets, and other methods of profiting from protecting nature. Barlow argues this “insidious new form of corporate plunder” permits continued pollution and habitat destruction by multinational corporations while taking resources away from Indigenous people and the world’s poorest countries. She describes, for example, how the oil companies Shell and TotalEnergies bought blocks of Peru’s Cordillera Azul National Park to “offset” their carbon footprints (the idea being that by paying to protect forests, which are critical for absorbing CO2 emissions, they are compensating for their greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere). However, the project resulted in the displacement of the Kichwa tribe and continued deforestation in the park, all while the companies continued to release massive amounts of C02. Barlow thoroughly describes the flaws with this approach to conservation, but her solutions, such as economic justice reforms and granting rights to rivers and other elements of nature, feel far-fetched. Still, this is an important call to protect the planet’s natural resources. (May)